Mining for hard rock minerals from underground mining deposits has typically been an expensive and laborious process. Past mining methods often required the drilling of hundreds of large sampling wells to assess the size and economic value of an underground mineral deposit. Once a desired mineral deposit was located, traditional mining methods consisted of excavating a large shaft, decline or adit into the mineral deposit to allow access into the underground mineral deposit by personnel and equipment. This type of excavation frequently required large equipment, explosives and additional methods and materials to secure and support the excavation to prevent collapse. Also, these traditional methods of mining are required for the displacement of large quantities of waste materials and water, often requiring leaching agents to extract the minerals, which can result in environmental destruction.
There have been hundreds of thousands of oil and gas wells drilled in the United States and even more in other countries. These wells are sometimes drilled to depths of over fifteen thousand feet and are often drilled through regions of rock which could contain minerals that could not be recovered through the traditional rock-mining methods due to the location and depth of the deposits. Nevertheless, these mineral deposits are typically ignored by oil and gas operators, and the hard-rock minerals are passed by and not recovered from the fluids produced from such wells.
Accordingly, there is a need for cost-effective ways to utilize existing or future oil and gas wells to assess and produce hard-rock minerals located beneath the surface that overcomes these other deficiencies in the prior art. It is to these and other objects that the present invention is directed.